Havok announced yesterday at GDC 08 a new added feature to their physics based development tools for video game design. Havok Cloth makes it a load easier for developers to simulate realistic cloth and clothing in their gaming environments. Check out the video below to see how Havok Cloth will make life easier for video game develpment:
Quietly unveiled at yesterday’s PSN session was PhyreEngine, a new “free to use graphics engine” from Sony Computer Entertainment. According to the presentation, the package includes full documentation, “70+ samples” and “full source code and artwork” of sample game templates. Working on both OpenGL and Direct3D, this engine will allow developers to more easily develop for the PS3 by using PC environments they’re more familiar with. A “simple recompile” is supposedly all that’s needed to make the game run on the PS3. Sony is promising “ongoing development and support” for the PhyreEngine.
Just as we suspected, the cunning group at Microsoft has revealed big plans for its XNA program, aimed at giving homebrew software developers a chance to showcase their talent.
John Schappert, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of Live, Software and Services for the Interactive Entertainment Business (whew!) spoke minutes ago at the company’s GDC press conference. As he puts it, the company feels it’s time to “unleash” the potential of amateur developers. “An awful lot of democratization going on today,” he stated.
In his speech he offered fascinating insights into the development of Bioshock, and how the game’s underlying story had evolved as well as how it came to represent a high-point of in-game storytelling.
“The truth is that nobody cares about your stupid story that you’ve been working on since 11th grade. The audience doesn’t care, no matter how much love and detail you have put in there. In fact, the more detail you put in, the worse it is. Detail may seem to you to represent all the hard work and all that’s best about your story, but it isn‘t your friend at all. It’s important to make things simple.”
While interviewing Ken Levine earlier this month for my story on the use of objectivism in BioShock we talked quite a bit about the plot. Near the end of the interview I found myself compelled to tell Levine what I thought of the game.
“I know I’m not a game developer, I just write about games,” I said to Levine, steeling myself for his reaction. “But I wasn’t exactly thrilled with the ending of the game. I felt like the confrontation with Ryan, the deneumont of the story, should have probably been the game’s ending. It felt like you dragged it out too much after that and it ended up watering down the experience.”
Speaking in an interview with Next-Gen, at GDC, Monday afternoon, Molyneux hinted that the new game would revolutionize in-game AI. Although he refused to be drawn on details he said, “In the six years since Black & White [was released] they have been working improving the great things that underpinned that game, and now they are getting pretty close to something that is very significant. It’s a very big thing. A new franchise and as close to something revolutionary as I have ever seen. And we’re close to announcing it.”
Molyneux–who has, it ought to be said, a bit of a reputation for getting overly enthused about projects in their earliest stages–was supposed to be speaking exclusively about Fable 2 (interview due to run here on Wednesday). But despite the protestations of his long-suffering publicity handlers he couldn’t resist a detour on whatever the Black & White guys are up to.
This post is not about “Gears of War 2. The mastermind behind the only “Gears” game that has ever been released, Cliff Bleszinski makes it clear in the interview that follows that he’s not hinting at any sequel.So don’t go looking for clues.
Instead, let’s focus on the matter at hand: A couple of weeks ago at the DICE gaming summit I asked Cliffy about just how a major new video game should be announced.
Why not just announce a sequel that everyone expects, be it for “Gears” or whatever? Why be coy? Who benefits? Who loses? And, hey, is “Too Human” developer Denis Dyack right? He says games should stay out of the press until they’re done. Agree, Cliffy?
The job description, as advertised on Games on Deck, calls for a program manager to help “build the games, the console interface and logic, and the server support for a totally new Live experience”.“Want to be involved in the next release of Xbox?… We are looking for a passionate Games Producer to help implement our first generation games that will run in this new environment,” the job advert reads.
Animation software company Image Metrics has revealed that its proprietary facial animation solution was used to animate characters in games including 2K Games’ Top Spin 3, Epic’s Unreal Tournament 3, and Rockstar’s Midnight Club Los Angeles and Grand Theft Auto IV.
The company says its animation solution animates faces without the need for markers or makeup, and is able to translate human movement onto the faces of game characters.
The current game-industry landscape is a challenging environment for startup studios, and even more so for those looking to focus on their own original intellectual properties. Given that, it’s a good thing for the recently incorporated Big Red Button Entertainment that the operation is in the hands of two veteran developers with a lengthy track record of success at Naughty Dog, the studio behind Uncharted, Jak and Daxter, and the original Crash Bandicoot.
